Endorse This

Her favourite party is endorsed by God himself.

And she makes a big fuss because I brought Marvin over.

Desperate, they must be desperate.

But in the battle of clashing egos, my light will shine through. Mark my words.

On the Campaign Trail

I have a personal confession to make. This leadership campaign might look intriguing but it is, above all, emotionally exhausting.

I have been called a labrador, a pug-nosed gimp, a tosser, a wanker, a piece of shit, a whippersnapper, a YUPPIE, a champagne centrist, a fake, a cunt and a bisexual rapist. My facial expressions have been scrutinized, my dress-sense massacred, my eating habits torn to pieces and the company I keep (mainly female) severly questioned.

Even the compliments are starting to tire me. People can be so repetitive and predictable when they want something in return. I’ve been called young, energetic, a go-getter, a doer, a tried and tested European, a hard-working family man, a father, and a loyal servant of the party. Someone even called me “The Messiah” (which I found a bit much, to be honest).

Somebody once described the business of trying to get elected as “the most wretched fortnight of my manhood.”  

I’ll offer a chairmanship to whoever correctly guesses who said that. Promise.

Daggers

This week I completed my metamorphosis into a fully-blown convinced Europhile. 

My critics have a problem with my transformation into a cosmopolitan gentleman with friends on the international stage. But can’t they see that we live in a rapidly-changing world? What they call hypocrisy, I call adaptation, what they call opportunism, I call realism. My rivals within the Centrist Party are mad but their attempts to bring me down are simply pathetic. How desperate must you be to deny a man the right to be patted on the back by his closest friends? What my provincial rivals are saying is this: it’s OK if your friends hail from Hal-Qormi, Gharghur or Sannat but it’s shameful if they’re from Bonn, Vienna or Helsinki.

What a bunch of peasants, I’ve got to say. Wake up and smell the coffee guys. Haven’t you realised that 30 years after Indhil Barrani we’re playing a whole new ball game?

Zubrowka – Bison Grass Vodka

One of my heroes, Alistair Campbell, once said ”We don’t do God”. 

Back home politicians don’t only “Do God”, they also “Do Eurovision”. Here’s Malta’s newly appointed Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, concluding her piece on the importance of culture:

This week, Malta’s representative to the Eurovision Song Festival left for Serbia.

I met Morena at her farewell party last Monday. The Vodka singer is a talented, lovely young woman, very shy and self-effacing in real life.

I wish her well. No matter what the result is I have no doubt she will give it her all, very conscious of the fact that she is Malta’s ambassador at this daunting event. For the next few weeks this annual contest and Malta’s participation will be a conversation piece in the most unexpected of places. Read the papers, watch television, listen to the radio; love it or hate it, it’s an annual event in our national agenda.

Am I going to be the first politician to admit that I think the whole Eurovision charade is taken way too seriously? Of course not. Let the people have their bread and circus, I say. Eurovision as opium of the people. Besides, what’s wrong with a beauty contest? It’s all part of what’s good about this wonderful continent of ours: the amazing variety of stunning women from Belgrade to Valletta, the hot parties, the overdone nationalism rubbing shoulders with the cross-border appeal of fit bodies. All under the pretence of culture.

But how appropriate that Zitka (the cutest intellectual in the world!) came up with another gem of hers today. I asked her what she thought of the Minister’s take on culture and the girl sent me an article by a Serbian (coincidence!) guy called Nikola Bozilovic. She’s become totally obsessed with this kitsch idea. The article is called Political Kitsch and Myth-Making Consciousness. Here’s the juicy bit on culture which Zitka highlighted in red: 

Why has nowadays the word ‘culture’ become a meaningless phrase in the jargon of quasi-political nonsense? Is it because it is used to sweep away all the fogs of political vagabondage and nonsensicality while pink-painting the gray reality? Is it used to, maybe, cover up the utopian horizons of the virtual reality and identify the key places of the supposingly bright future which is here, almost knocking at our doors? Culture as an alibi, excuse, empty promise, escapist adventure. In the diction of the Serbian quasi-politicians this word, which is otherwise imbued with meaning, becomes meaningless and used as “worn-out shoes”. Culture has become a common appendage, coating, glaze on a cake or an artificial heart-shaped gift.”

That was Sigmund. Linking Dolores Cristina, Nikola Bozilovic, Zitka Krolova and Morena di Gozo.

Important People Blog

Have you noticed the recent proliferation of blogs by influential people like me in the past weeks?

One factor unites them all (except mine, of course). The person behind the keyboard is primarily interested in telling you how smart and perceptive and original and cutting edge they are. And less interested in reaching out, building on what other people said before and making links between ideas.

Their efforts might as well be called “I’m the smarty pants round here, sod off losers.”

Basically, everyone’s a fucking Columbus. Nevermind the unique snowflake.

I promise to be different. You know you can trust Sigmund.

A-listers

A good friend called me today. He’s done well for himself but went on his usual rant, cursing the fact that he was born on what he calls ‘a small, isolated island’. I told him that, once again, he was displaying an attitude which I call the ’DCG complex’ and reminded him of Malta’s one major advantage: quick, easy fame and that beautiful feeling that ‘you are someone special’. All you require to be an A-lister in that pond is a penchant for self-publicity. And the people who, in faux exasperation, refer to the place as provincial, petty and small aren’t likely to get out of there any time soon. Lilliput suits them fine, too.

Moral of the story: It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big one (even if the small pond gets on your nerves)

I know what I’m talking about.

But I’d better go, Zsuzsanna’s getting impatient. Egeszegedre.

Statistics

This place is full of single, ‘open minded’ women. Every six months a fresh crop of stagiaires land in a rainy town which offers good parties, an international environment and endless opportunities to meet new people. This is where I developed my Opportunity Principle which explains everything you ever need to know about relationships between men and women. Forget that crap about Mars and Venus. I’ll tell you more about the Opportunity Principle some other time.

By the time we were twenty, we had worked out the key to understanding our nation. Like Pawlu on his way to Damasku we were blinded by the clarity of our discovery. It was a question of statistics and it goes like this:

400, 000: the total population of The Republic of Malta. 200, 000: the approximate female population. 40,000: the number of females aged 18-35. 20,000: the number of females in the 18-35 age-group who were in a ‘meaningful relationship’. 18,000: the number of remaining females with whom conversation would be ’severely limited’. That leaves you with 2000 women. A fair guess is that out of those 2000, about 400 of them would find you OK.

400 eligible women seems like an ocean of possibilities. But we were not just cynics, we were also artistic snobs. We hated mediocrity. So we decided that for a variety of stylistic preferences (noses, accents, tastes in music) the real number would boil down to 50 eligible women. This was a deceptively encouraging number – before experience kicked in. By the time we had survived two tedious years of university, most of us had indirectly exchanged fluids with several of our closest friends. Our calculations soon showed us that it was either a lifetime with girl number one or a lifetime of pathological wifeswapping in a predominantly Catholic country.

So we dabbled in foreign girls, our safety valves and proof that sanity could only be found very far away. For these girls would come to visit, bask in the sunshine, drink Kinnie and Cisk, feel the warmth of the honey-coloured houses and fall in love with the salty taste of a Mediterranean summer. They would then depart, leaving us to Tal-Qroqq, dreary pot-holed winters and the fifth season of Xarabank.

We had decided that the insanity of our country was simply structural. No ‘new way of doing politics’ would ever change that. Harry Vassallo was fighting a losing battle, a modern Don Quixote.

It was time to get out. Fast.    

 

Kind Request

Dr. Bonello would kindly ask the chaps at maltamedia.com to refrain using random visuals to accompany his blogposts.

Please simply use the Dr. Sigmund Bonello avatar.

Nirringrazzjakom mill-qalb.

Sigmund  

 

My 10-point Plan For a Modern Centrist Party

Over the past 10 years I faithfully towed the party line through thick and thin, minor victories and crushing defeats. People look at me now and ask how I could have militated in a party which is, not different, but diametrically opposed to the party I am proposing to lead. Sweethearts, that’s politics for you, all I’m doing is Playing The Game Well. It’s great fun, to be honest. You get in with the Top Guys, make a few strong speeches, criticise the other side and wait in the wings for things to change. It’s a Win-Win situation for those who play it cleverly.

Are you surprised at how transparent I am? Do you think I’m crazy admitting these things? Think again, this is the age of transparency, the age of blogs, the age of Big Brother. Why should politics be different? It isn’t – look at Nicolas and Carla.

My 10-point plan is, appropriately, called Transparency is All. Here it is in Soundbite Form (I love Soundbites)

1) Transparency is God, Just Do It

2) Let’s Dream Together

3) We Must Reach Out*

4)  Ideas not Ideology

5) We’re Young, We’re Sexy and We’re Gonna Turn You On

6) Come and Talk to Us

7) The Natural Party for Opportuniststy 

8)  We Care

9) Trust Me

10) Spread the New Message of Love

 

* (Remember guys, all we need is a 2000 vote swing)

Divorced from it all

Unfortunately, one of the inevitable questions I get asked at cocktail and dinner parties in this town of absolute liberalism is why Malta doesn’t allow its citizens to get divorced. I always get that puzzled look which says ‘you guys must be crazy’. If I’m talking to a good-looking woman I reply ‘if you get married to a foreigner, it’s ok’. If I’m talking to a woman I’m not interested in sleeping with I give her the whole socio-political-religious argument. This made interesting conversation for a while. But after four years in this place, the whole thing’s becoming desperately boring. For the past two years I’ve been telling the less attractive of my dinner companions to refer their question to Jason and Joe - the two Malta Konservattiva MEPs. 

My Czech friend, Zitka, has another explanation. She’s become intrigued by Malta after our trip there last year and reads all the local newspapers on line. She loves The Times which she calls ’so sweet’. I don’t know what she means. Zitka thinks that Malta is the land of kitsch and that that alone explains the whole divorce thing. She wrote me this email yesterday: 

“Malta drips with kitsch. You take Eurovision seriously, your newspapers and politicians are beautifully kitsch, all those religious feasts are great – so kitsch

Kundera defines kitsch as ‘the absolute denial of shit’ by which he meant that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult to come to terms with, offering instead a sanitised view of the world in which all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

The world of kitsch is a world of make-believe, of permanent childhood, in which every day is Christmas.”